Time hasn't been kind to The Old Republic. It certainly doesn't feel like a game that came out last Christmas, even if at launch its technology and largely reskinned Warcraft mechanics were more a base for BioWare to flex its narrative muscles with than a big leap forward for massively multiplayer games. Now, not even a year later, with the game recently turned free-to-play, going back to explore its worlds feels like archeology. Sometimes palaeontology. And the story that BioWare hoped to tell is unlikely to have a happy ending.

From launch, The Old Republic's key problem was that it was stuck serving two very different masters - the personal storylines it wanted everyone to focus on and the subscription fee whose dark shadow loomed over all. It offered narrative beats far beyond what any other MMO had dared, with a choice of eight different character classes, each with a unique, branching story. It then suffocated them with padding, slow levelling and an endless array of tedious stock quests that no amount of dialogue could jazz up. (You also had to spend a ridiculous amount of time running around to check in on people despite owning a bloody cellphone. That bugged me. Just saying.)

None of this has changed. What has, though, is that story is no longer an exciting novelty, while World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Guild Wars 2 and The Secret World have all surpassed The Old Republic's stilted dialogue, basic cinematography and forgettable characters. In Pandaria, phasing and scripting comes together for a more dynamic experience with a good sense of humour. Guild Wars 2 remembers that an MMO is expected to be a multiplayer experience first, layering its plotting and single-player content on top far more skilfully. The Secret World offers infinitely better writing. Yes, they all have issues, especially with pacing. They still trounce The Old Republic's attempts, rendering it drier than moondust.

This re-review is of the PC and Mac version of Team Fortress 2, now available for free. The console versions, included in The Orange Box, have had comparatively few updates and remain closer to the version tested in our original Team Fortress 2 review from 2007.

There isn't one game called Team Fortress 2. There are hundreds. Its famously long development time used to see it compared to Duke Nukem Forever, but that doesn't hold water any more: Duke's finished. The development of TF2 goes on and on: new weapons, new levels, new gametypes, new accessories, new achievements, new features, new hats. All updates are free. And now, so is the game.

A Valve employee once wryly remarked that the company could put $20 in a box, sell it for $10, and people would still find something to criticise. The announcement of TF2's change to a free-to-play model bears that out: a vocal minority seem to think this is a great insult to TF2's previous purchasers, while an even smaller minority have set up servers dedicated to kicking out free players. Next to the size and beauty of Team Fortress 2, that is laughable behaviour.

There's a wonderful moment, around an hour into the film Logan's Run, where there's a shot that looks suspiciously like a plastic toy car being pulled through a length of Habitrail hamster tubing. You either wince in horror – suspension of disbelief not just sent crashing to the floor, but taking the ceiling with it – or you grin precisely because it's so silly.

To those who have a soft spot for such things, it's endearing. A similar air of techno daftness abounds in Champions Online, Cryptic's superhero MMO which turned free-to-play recently.

Sadly, the game missed the mark on its arrival in 2009. While it delighted many with its freakishly free-form character creation, it fudged the early game with a bewildering stat system that turned many players off long before the first month was over. It was an overwhelmingly underwhelming start, and the game has travelled a rocky road through player revolts and balancing problems ever since.

When Sports Interactive announced it was resetting the Football Manager Live servers and ostensibly re-starting the game from scratch, there was understandable uproar within some sections of the FML community. Why, after 15 months of commitment, should die-hard subscribers have to forfeit the majority of their hard work? Sports Interactive's answer was that the game had become overly imbalanced towards early birds with a half-decent knowledge of the Football Manager player database. Once top teams had hoarded the majority of the best players, they became almost impossible to catch.

The decision to reset the servers was a bold and highly risky one, with the game's loyal fan-base ultimately the ones who've been the most penalised. Clearly, Sports Interactive is hoping to welcome a new wave of subscribers buoyed by the reset's more level playing field. But with the reset in full swing and with the game having undergone numerous tweaks and changes since we first reviewed it in January 2009, is Football Manager Live still worth investing your precious time and money into - especially if you've just had 15 months of work wiped away?

If you're one of the many players who've dedicated themselves to FML over the past year, the good news is that Sports Interactive hasn't forgotten about you. But whether you'll consider their efforts to placate you enough to warrant your continued loyalty, well, that's something only you can decide.

There are few things in this line of work more beautiful than genuine enthusiasm. It inspires you as a writer - not quite so much as to fool you into giving a shoddy product a critical reach-around, but certainly enough to make you want to commend its creators for giving it a try. And when the enthusiasm accompanies a genuinely excellent piece of interactive craftsmanship, well, that's when you stop regretting the fact that you didn't get a real job with regular pay and overtime and superannuation and everything.

When I met him, Russell Williams - chief executive of developer Flying Labs and one of the pre-eminent creative minds behind nautical MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea - was enthusiastic. His game had only just entered open beta, and already he was gushing about the huge plans he had for it - port revamps, ship dungeons, additional guild features and so on. He demonstrated passion for both his game and its subject matter, and he wasn't haughty about it, either; he was magnanimous towards his competitors, and avoided downplaying Blizzard's efforts as so many up-and-coming MMO developers do.

His exuberance wasn't unfounded: the Pirates beta was a marvellous prototype. Sure, it had its weaknesses - bland avatar combat, samey ports, a sudden, frightening difficulty curve - but it was interesting, uncompromising, and enjoyable in the long term. Of course, that was two years ago. Generous estimates put Pirates' subscriber numbers at around 100,000 at their peak, which isn't too bad considering that Flying Labs was aiming for an EVE-esque slow burn, but it does raise a troubling question: is Pirates still niche because its open-ended gameplay only appeals to a certain type of MMO buyer, or because it's crap?

Branding, circumstance and strange luck are all part of Dungeons & Dragons Online's history. Its timing was horrible; it leapt head-first into an MMORPG market that had just realised that it didn't want to be quite as hardcore with a game that, by its very history, was hardcore. While other games were encouraging you to fight on your own, occasionally grouping to high-five and key-tap your way to level 60, DDO told you that you needed to group and you were only getting to, at the highest, 20 - which it didn't even support initially.

But while you might expect it to have skidded to an abrupt, bloody-kneed halt, it has, in fact, grown - not least with this month's huge Module 9 update, and the launch of a free-to-play version, Eberron Unlimited, in the US.

DDO lies somewhere between World of Warcraft's hotkey-focused fighting and a twitch-based action RPG with functions similar to the dodging and blocking from Fable. The average goal of a DDO session is to romp through an instance, completing sub-objectives to reach the end of the dungeon and usually a narrative of sorts. These are voiced over by the bizarre baritone of the Dungeon Master, who adds a campy flair to proceedings.

I was watching my housemate, also an on-off WAR player, creating yet another character. "What's the point in choosing a face for him," he asked, "when they all look the same?" On-screen, a parade of only faintly distinguishable Dark Elf visages cycled around and around. In truth, I couldn't tell at what point we returned to the first face in the roster, but nonetheless I unconvincingly offered "yeah, but you can change the colour of your outfit at any point". My housemate remained silent. Meanwhile, the near-identical faces continued their eerie dance.

Warhammer Online's argument is that this kind of thing simply isn't important. Only war is important. Haircuts and clothes and personality - these things only get in the way of the war without end, the only cause that matters. This steely-jawed, flinty-eyed determination doesn't just deny aesthetic elements, either. You don't need to worry about buying new inventory space, recharging health doesn't require sitting down and having a protracted snack, mounts are available very quickly, the exact location of your quest targets is highlighted on the map, player-versus-player battlegrounds can be travelled to instantly, a poor build choice can be undone cheaply, common XP is earned from both PvE and PvP, and everyone has essentially the same gear as anyone else of the same level and class. If it slows things down, if it gets in the way of fighting, fighting, fighting, WAR has thrown it out.

It's a noble sentiment, and one intended to directly address, even bust, many of the more ridiculous and irritating stereotypes or compromises of the oft-cynical MMORPG genre. Mythic's developers don't want you to waste your time saving up money for a bigger rucksack. They just want to you to fight - ideally, to fight other players. The game's greatest triumph is a largely seamless blend between punching NPCs and punching real people - no need for different skill sets or alternative armour. The enemy is the enemy. That row of number keys and a few team-mates, be they anonymous or known chums, are all you need.

I've got history with Age of Conan. Ever since Eurogamer started revisiting MMOGs on a regular basis, it's been inevitable that some games will have their ups and downs - but few quite as steep a rollercoaster ride as Funcom's rough-hewn epic of blood, steel and breasts.

Twelve months ago, I was too lenient. Giving the game 8/10 in its first review on the site, I was aware of problems - some gaps in the content, bugs in the game engine, and so on - but optimistic. No MMO has a totally smooth launch, and Conan's was rougher than most, but I - foolishly - scored the game on its potential and on the heartfelt belief that Funcom, the company which had resuscitated Anarchy Online after a terrible launch and turned it into a warmly-regarded cult hit, would have the problems smoothed out in no time.

"In the next six to twelve months, Age of Conan will live or die on how successfully Funcom can address these issues." That's how we closed off our initial review of Age of Conan - acknowledging grave flaws, but with immense optimism thanks to an early flurry of patches which steadily improved the game, week on week.

Let's not beat around the bush - our optimism was misplaced. Re-reading the initial review caused a number of heartfelt sighs and shaken heads this week. In almost every place where we fretted that Funcom might slip up, the company went and did exactly that.

Four months after launch, the game is best summed up as disappointing. It still has potential and even flair, but for all that it could be, it's failing to live up even to what it should be.

Giant, bipedal war machines stalk through the hills, small groups of tanks roll in determinedly, while around them infantry move up and engineers lay down defences, fix up damaged vehicles. Soldiers select equipment from a mobile re-spawn vehicle, squatting under a shimmering cloaking dome. Overhead, aircraft dogfight, while a dropship, braving anti-aircraft fire, flies over the besieged base and discharges a contingent of soldiers, some nestled inside bulky exo-armour with formidable firepower. Defenders man gun turrets and return fire from the parapet that tops the base's imposing walls. The battle rages. Welcome to PlanetSide.

Released back in May 2003, PlanetSide was yet another bellicose videogame vision of the future. But unlike previous games involving humans fighting a future war, PlanetSide was unique in that those doing the scrapping were exclusively other players. Potentially thousands of other players, working with a remarkably diverse array of hardware to create unprecedented, elaborate gameplay. That elaborate play survives to this day, with much of what PlanetSide offers yet to be bettered by any game, FPS or MMO. Call of Duty 4's multiplayer, for example, may offer diversity in its weapons, but you're still on small-scale maps on servers that only support small numbers of players. PlanetSide is massive. An entire world at war.

Although the massively multiplayer FPS had been born a few years earlier with World War II Online, PlanetSide improved considerably on the formula. It promised to transform the FPS genre. It didn't. But for those of us who got hooked on PlanetSide, it was a landmark in gaming.

Three years and three months ago (to the day, at time of writing), Guild Wars proved itself a real charmer. Good looks, flexibility and an eagerness to please helped it to find favour with an unusually broad spectrum of players, with hugely disparate experience with MMOs. The complete absence of a subscription fee seemed baffling at the time, but combined with the accessibility of Guild Wars' interface and structure, it opened up the genre to a new category of casual players, while beguiling the more experienced by dispensing with a swathe of genre conventions that suddenly seemed embarrassingly outdated.

Since then, the Guild Wars universe has been fleshed out with two new campaigns and one expansion pack, and some five million of these boxes have been sold at that one-time GBP 20 purchase price. Guild Wars' strengths have proven enduring, and the game still enjoys a huge player community. It's still well-presented, obscenely beautiful on the right equipment, and nonetheless runs well on pretty much any PC purchased since 2005. But last year's Eye of the North was the last planned expansion before the sequel arrives sometime late in 2009; now that the Guild Wars trilogy is complete, has it lived up to its promise?

It's worth explaining how the trilogy functions nowadays, and how its constituent parts fit together - because it really is confusing for returning players. Each of the three Guild Wars campaigns (Prophecies, Factions and Nightfall, from oldest to youngest) is a standalone, extremely lengthy role-playing campaign, taking place on a concurrent timeline. In this sense they are distinct games, with distinct features.

I remember those thronging streets. Towns where you couldn't walk a foot down the sidewalk without bumping into a collection of uber-powered folks, ready to fight crime in all its forms. I remember staring at the vast crowds gathered around Ms Liberty in Atlas Park, a sea of the brightly coloured, winged, robotic, muscular and lithe. Paragon City was a thriving metropolis.

Today, it is a ghost town. Crime runs unhindered, old ladies stuck in perpetual battles with violent thugs over their handbags, no one coming to their aid. Clockwork menaces kick their feet on rooftops, realising the futility of their existence when there's no one to zap. Circles of Thorns fizzle with impotent demonic energy. Where did all the heroes go?

City of Heroes/Villains is getting on a bit. No, the servers aren't empty, but rather the action is nearer the top end, the higher levels. It's four years old now, but in its third year you would still expect to see those starting areas, Atlas Park and Galaxy City, bulging with newbs, fitting themselves out with their first powers, showing off their explosive buffs in public areas. Returning - it's been a while since I fought crime in these streets - was a peculiarly lonely experience.

Over the course of writing the first draft of this feature, we discovered something fairly pertinent - there's a fine line between a re-review and an autopsy. Eurogamer's recent re-appraisal of World of Warcraft (conclusion: still stealing our lives) was a re-review: the subject is most certainly still alive and well.

Today's piece, sadly, feels more like an autopsy. Tabula Rasa isn't cold on the slab, but it's certainly heading that way. Much as it pains us - this is a young game, full of potential, and seemingly struck down before it had a chance to blossom - this article is going to end up being about piecing together the final hours, establishing the suspects and motives, and making those cruel incisions to examine the damage to the internal organs. CSI: Internet.

Of course, there will be those who decry the suggestion that TR is a dying game - and we wish we could count ourselves among them, we really do. We began our last article on TR by saying that there's a lot to love about the game, and we still firmly believe that in spite of a mis-managed launch and some shockingly poor design decisions, TR still essentially has the best combat, and some of the most interesting missions and zones, of any MMO we've played.

The Trinity upgrade for EVE came at exactly the right moment - a moment at which thousands of gamers had started to realise that the seemingly perpetually beautiful space game was looking a bit more like something made out of cardboard. Now, on the other side of a massive visual overhaul, it is once again the most beautiful vision of bleak interstellar warfare that the world has ever seen. Sure, it doesn't quite run so smoothly on all our clunky old PCs, but you can always flick it back to the "classic" visual theme if you're having problems.

If I'm entirely honest, I'd have to say that EVE has long lost its meaning as a posh graphical experience. It's always looked good, sure, but I've been waging war in the nebulae too long to really notice that stuff any more. These days, it's about numbers: how much money? How many kills? And relationships: How many enemies? How many allies? The game becomes abstract - more about speed and ranges on your overview interface than about piloting a glittering warp-speeding death-tube - to a point at which, when you do notice the visuals, it's a bit of a jolt. Blimey, those ships really do look grand.

Of course, for new players, all this fresh splendour seems incredibly alluring. EVE's lavish universe is pretty much unrivalled, and marvelling at the new shadows and bump maps on your ships will eat up hours of your time. Simply sitting in busy space lanes until you've seen every kind of ship will seem like enough for the first couple of days of the game. One thing I have appreciated is the overhaul of the larger ships and the space stations, which, finally, do look like giant pieces of engineering in space. The new lighting and dynamic shadows add something to the perspective of the game, allowing these monsters to seem as immense as they really are.

If you cast your mind back to last April, you might remember something curious about the launch of Lord of the Rings Online: how smooth it was. There were very few bugs, despite the usual array of gameplay complaints, and a straight 9/10 score from our resident hardman Rob. No launch had been so professional in the MMO world since World of Warcraft's. And, unlike its near-contemporary Auto Assault, LOTRO is still going; in fact the number of people playing has been rapidly increasing. So what's changed since then, and why is it drawing new gamers in?

The main reason must be LOTRO's substantial free content updates, all of which continue the story. The way they're opening up the world as they do so, introducing new areas with every new chapter and working out the story through perfectly-scripted instances - after the astounding dungeons of Dungeons & Dragons Online, it has to be said that developers Turbine are the instance kings - means the story is, unlike WOW, LOTRO's biggest hook. For Tolkien fans, the fact that your story always runs parallel to that of the Fellowship is great anyway, as it expands the world you've already read so much about - and it's a lot more fun than reading the bleeding Children of Hurin and putting up with Tolkien and Tolkien Jr's mawkish imitation of the lingo of Norse epics.

Making the main town for each race the starting area means that as you go further into the game, you're further from home (more on this later), in increasingly high-level areas, and at a later point in the books' story. Though each race has different beginnings, they all dovetail together neatly into the main narrative, which itself cleverly supports the main storyline of the novels. Moreover, the best thing about the story is the instances.

Unlike most other games, MMOs change over time. Audiences grow or shrink, features are changed, interfaces are overhauled, game balance is adjusted, new content and play styles are added, communities thrive or die. A review of an MMO can't be set in stone. So, on Eurogamer's new MMO channel, we'll be regularly re-reviewing the games to let you know the current state of play, and to help you decide whether it's time to jump in - or time to leave. Here's the first of these, about the biggest game: World of Warcraft.

Talk about the elephant in the room. It's impossible to discuss MMOs at the moment without talking about World of Warcraft. It dominates almost every conversation, and lurks, a leviathan-sized subtext, under the surface of all the others. Its unstoppable and truly global success - that imposing, 10-million-subscription bulk - acts as both carrot and stick. WOW lures rivals into MMOs with the promise of riches beyond their wildest dreams, before the seemingly insurmountable challenge of taking it on drives them away with their tails between their legs.

In the circumstances, it's easy to be cynical, or even resentful. It's easy to characterise Blizzard as calculating and exploitative pushers and slave-masters. It's easy to gripe about the game's grind, its cheerfully cheesy fantasy schlock, its lack of high-concept innovations, its broad and sometimes basic populism.